It almost feels tropical for a moment, listening to the trickle of running water and basking in the pink light of UV lamps, in a forest of tiny lettuce heads, but then you exit the shipping container where this hydroponics operation is housed, only to be met with cold, vast tundra and snow covered peaks.

Arctic Greens is a hydroponics company operating on the edge of Greenland’s capital city, Nuuk, where owners Michael Heretis and Ivalu Wille are working to give Greenlanders more options when it comes to local food, and to help make the economy less dependent on food imported from other countries.

There’s just one problem: the lettuce sprouts typically grow for two weeks, but then they wilt and die. Something isn’t quite right with the amount of oxygen the roots are getting, and while balancing two full-time jobs and raising two kids, Heretis and Wille haven’t solved this problem yet.

Greenland has traditionally been a hunter-gatherer society, but as people enter the workforce and the wage-economy, hunters now sell their catch. A price that will turn a profit for the hunters, however, can’t always compete with cheap, imported meats.

This competition is on display every afternoon, as local meat and fish sellers line up outside the largest supermarket in town, proudly displaying the catch of the day, which could be anything from halibut or redfish, to seal or muskox. But it can’t always compete with the discount chicken, pork, and beef inside.

They often reduce their prices for elders, who are used to eating mostly Greenlandic food. Overall, however, demand seems to fluctuate -- booming at the beginning of the month, when people first receive their paychecks, but waning near the month’s end.

For many urban Greenlanders in the growing city of Nuuk, traditional food is reserved for “Kaffemik,” an open-house when a birthday, confirmation, or other event is celebrated with local delicacies, cake, and coffee.

Lettuce isn’t part of the traditional food culture, and it’s not an easy sell. You can’t blame the locals for passing up on bruised and browning heads of iceberg lettuce that just came off a long ship journey.

But agriculture isn’t completely new to Greenland. Although restricted to the summer months and the southern part of the island, some ambitious farmers grow potatoes, carrots, and even strawberries. When available, Greenlanders snap up this produce quickly, proud to be eating food that comes from their homeland.

The founders of Arctic Greens noticed this. Every time they’ve sent a crop of lettuce to the supermarket in Nuuk, people have quickly bought it all, often reaching out through Facebook and giving them feedback: “it’s too small,” or “it’s not crispy enough.”

Although the supermarkets pay more for each head of Arctic Greens lettuce, they sell them for almost the same as imported lettuce, though Heretis said they hope to reduce their price over time. This is because the supermarkets buy local lettuce by the head, but foreign lettuce by the crate, and when it arrives, it’s so banged up much of it is unsellable.

Heretis and Wille have to import their nutrient blend from the U.S.A. and their seeds from Denmark. But they’ve already begun experimenting with creating their own nutrients using seaweed from the bay.

“We only tried the seaweed thing with one [head of] lettuce so far,” said Heretis. “It worked. It became really big and nice. But we haven’t had the time and resources yet to try with many lettuces.”

It seems as if the entire Nuuk community, including politicians and other businesses, are rooting for Arctic Greens to succeed. Heretis jokes that all the politicians in Greenland have visited the farm. Even the utility companies are behind them. 

The resource issues faced by Arctic Greens are different from those faced by most hydroponic farmers.

Last April they noticed a slow leak in one of their tanks, and began to empty it with a hose, which they led outside. But before long, the water coming out the other end froze, and they had to halt the process for the day, while the hose thawed.

Keeping the lights on and the facility at the optimal temperature is an energy intensive endeavor for any hydroponics farm, but especially in the higher latitudes. It’s no coincidence that the farm is located next to a garbage-incinerating power plant. The company operating the incinerator offered them a space to put their shipping containers and a lower energy rate until Arctic Greens can become financially viable, though Nuuk’s primary source of energy is hydropower.